Starling Cambridge and the Mind-Users

Chapter Eleven

A/N- Sorry about the long wait, my softball season has started back up and I've been super busy. I'm going to try and post a new chapter every week, hopefully. Anyways, I would love to hear you guys' thoughts and opinions and here is the new chapter you guys have been waiting too long for! 

Lucy and Remo stopped suddenly almost causing me to trip over them. I gathered myself, looking up to see why they had stopped. We were standing in front of a slanted yellow tent. The tent flap was tied back leaving the entrance to the tent wide open. I peered inside over the twins' tiny frames. The inside was brighter than Henry's tent, and little string lights hung around the whole room. A couple of people were bustling around the tent completing various tasks. I followed Remo and Lucy as they walked through the open entrance. Shelves stocked full of various medical supplies filled up all of the walls. I followed closely behind Remo and Lucy careful not to bump into any of the people bustling about the place. A loud voice rang out through the large-ish tent, "REMO AND LUCY, WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN!?"

Embarrassingly, I ducked my head and flinched when the voice boomed throughout the room. Remo and Lucy grinned and Lucy quickly grabbed my hand for what seemed to be the fiftieth time today. I swear I had never, ever, been pulled around this much before. I felt small and weak, but I had no idea how to feel like myself again. There were so many strangers around me and so many eyes on me that I suddenly felt very overwhelmed. I wanted to stop and close my eyes and maybe scream, but Lucy kept pulling me through the tent, my little light in the dark, dark tunnel I was stuck in.

Lucy stopped and I looked up, barley glimpsing the tall red headed woman standing before me before I looked right back at my feet again. The woman's voice was strong, very strong as she told the twins not to disappear for an entire week without saying hello at least once.

"We're sorry, Willow, we just got a little...distracted," Remo said.

"I can see that. Who's this new friend you've brought?," the woman, who's name appeared to be Willow, asked.

"Who are you?," she asked, forcing me to look up.

"My name's Starling Cambridge," I said, taking in the Willow's hulking build. She had muscles for days. Aside from her totally ripped arms, I noticed her gentle brown eyes, that seemed to instill me with a very calm and safe feeling and her crazy, and I mean crazy, red hair. She had cowlicks sticking every which way and frizzy strands of hair fell in front of her ears. She needed a hairbrush.

"Nice to meet you, kid, you sure look like you need to be checked out," Willow said, grabbing my arm and pulling me through the clumps of bustling people, "Did you have a fight with a bear?"

"No, actually I had a fight with a crazed teenage girl and a couple of tree branches," I replied, slightly laughing, I seriously felt like a crazy person.

"Woah, what a day, what brought you here?"

"It's kind of a long story," I muttered as Willow motioned for me to sit on a metal table that had been pushed in between two huge metal shelves full of medical supplies. The tent was much bigger than it seemed to be.

Willow grabbed a first aid kit and set it on the table beside me. She began, pressing at different points all across my chest and back, and up and down my arms, stopping for just a minute whenever I yelped. She pressed hard on a spot in the middle of my rib cage for the third time, causing me to yelp again.

" Does that hurt?," she asked, not releasing her touch on the spot.

"Yes," I gasped, my entire chest burning like I had been caught on fire. She finally released her touch and I watched her step back, grabbing some gauze and medical tape. I rubbed my chest, grimacing as my gentle touch sent burning sensations down my entire abdomen.

"You seem fine everywhere else, it just looks like you cracked a few ribs and busted your face up," Willow said, wrapping gauze around my torso and taping it down with the medical tape, "That's about as much as I can do for your ribs, just make sure you don't move around to much."

I watched silently as Willow pulled a bucket filled with folded towels out from the bottom shelf of metal shelves to my right. She handed me one of the soaking rags and instructed me to clean my face and arms up, so she could fix up me up. I rubbed the cold, wet rag down my cheeks. It felt so good. I took my time scrubbing the dirt and dried blood from my arms, relishing in the feeling of the cold water on my hot skin. When I was finally done, Willow applied medical ointments to the various cuts, gashes, and scrapes on my arms and face. She told me there was really nothing else she could do about the swelling on my legs (that's what that weird burning feeling was, swelling bruises), and my black eye. She handed me a pair of fresh clothes to change into, pointing to a little area in the far corner of the tent hidden by a curtain. I had absolutely no idea how they got a curtains to stay put in a tent. Don't you need like a sturdy surface to hang them up on?

I walked over to the area she was pointing to and pulled the curtain around me so that no one in the tent watch me change. I pulled off my dirty, bloodied clothes and pulled the black sweatshirt that Willow had given me over my head. I rummaged through the pile of clothing she had handed me until I found the white fabric sticking out through a pair of jeans. Yes, a clean pair of underwear! I slipped on the fresh pair of undies, feeling better already. I pulled on the pair of jeans she had given me and slipped my beat up, old red Converse back on. I walked out of the curtained area and made my way back towards Willow.

"Well, you look better, kid,' she said, patting me on the shoulder and leading me out of the tent and through the open tent flap.

"Afraid that's all I can do for you, though."

"Thank you, for everything," I replied, truly grateful for all she had done for me. I never knew how good a clean pair of undies could feel until now. My body was still sore and my chest still felt like it was on fire each time I moved it, but I'm sure I would heal.